One month into X ownership....

[4.8bro]

Wow, beautiful ride. That is a great color. Can you tell me about the MK 4 Nav upgrade? How is it better that stock? I'm unimpressed with the stock Nav system.
Is the upgrade reliable?

[Michelle]

LOOOOOOOOOVE IT!

[1stE53]

Are your BMW roundels that colour or did you use those stickers that are our there? The previous owner of mine used the stickers, I had no idea till I looked REAL close.
Great looking X5!!!!

[rlabair]

Very nice! Great mods.

[JohnD]

Nice headlights.. Where did you get them?

[TheKingSim0n]

Originally Posted by jfb1977

So I'm a month into owning my first X5 so I thought I'd share a few pics of what I've been up to....

So, my car is a 2002 4.4i Sport in steel grey with black leather and titanium trim. The spec is pretty good with widescreen sat nav, DVD and Playstation (all factory options) with rear screens and infrared headphones, heated rear seats, sunroof, integrated Motorola phone etc.



To date, I've added -

• Bluetooth, integrated into MFSW
• DICE Ipod kit
• DEPO HID headlights (8000k) with clear indicator lenses and UHP angel eyes
• LED rear lenses
• Stealth bulbs all round
• Black and grey roundels, steering wheel roundel and wheel centres
• Matte black kidney grille
• MK4 DVD sat nav upgrade with 2010 disc (with voice alerts for speed cameras and X5 splash screen on start up)
• 4.8is 20 inch wheels
• TV in motion lead installed

So here are some pics.....hope you like it!

Your X looks great but, one question, heated REAR seats? hows that? Ive never seen that one...

[X5 Meister]

You're joking right?

Originally Posted by TheKingSim0n

Your X looks great but, one question, heated REAR seats? hows that? Ive never seen that one...

[jfb1977]

Originally Posted by 4.8bro

Wow, beautiful ride. That is a great color. Can you tell me about the MK 4 Nav upgrade? How is it better that stock? I'm unimpressed with the stock Nav system.
Is the upgrade reliable?

I guess the first thing to clarify is that you know the MK4 DVD based system is still 'stock' so to speak - it's an OEM BMW item, just the DVD based 'brain', not the CD based one. Hope that's not me teaching you to suck eggs....just wanted to be clear!

It was extremely simple. I bought a MK4 DVD based unit from eBay for about £400 (not cheap!) and swapped it out for the CD unit in the boot. (Where the CD mulitchanger lives).

It's a case of undoing 4 bolts and then plug and play.

The only additional thing I had to do was take the car to the dealer so that they could make the new unit 'talk' to the speedo (I'd lost my ETA function when I fired her back up as the new nav unit wasn't coded to my car).

I spent £40 on a 2010 DVD high from the internet that came with the latest European maps and voice speed camera alerts (and also a very cool X5 splash screen on start up).

The main benefits are night mode, split screen and a much faster processing time (it seems much more accurate on junctions in cities than the old CD based system). Also (this is probably UK / Europe specific) it allows me to have 7 digit postcodes (zip codes to you guys across teh pond) whereas the older system only had 5 digit look up.

Hope that helps...let me know if you need any more info.

[jfb1977]

I think TheKingSim0n has started another thread on this, but yeah, it's an option. Let me know if you want pics..

[jfb1977]

Originally Posted by JohnD

Nice headlights.. Where did you get them?

From a user on eBay called fishcake321.

They guy I dealt with was called Simon and he can be contacted via [email protected] (if you mention you got his details from a guy called Joe in the UK he'll know who I am - I pestered him by email for long enough)!

He really knows his stuff and helped me a lot through the process.....be warned though....the headlights come with no instructions!

Not a problem if you have OEM xenons and just want the clear indicators and angel eyes (those units are just plug and play) but if you're upgrading from halogens to HID there's a bit of wiring required that aint straight forward.

Luckily there's lots of helpful people and posts on Xoutpost to get it sorted!

Good luck!